Rabbi Tarfon teaches, “The day is short. The task is long. The workers are lazy. The stakes are high. The Master is demanding” Mishna Avot 2:20
“You are not obliged to complete the task, nor are you free to abandon it. If you have studied much Torah you will reap great reward. You can rely on your Employer to pay you your due, but not in the currency of this world, but rather the World to Come” Mishnah Avot 2:21
ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πέμψαντός με ἕως ἡμέρα ἐστίν: ἔρχεται νὺξ ὅτε οὐδεὶς δύναται ἐργάζεσθαι.
Hemas dei ergazesthai ta erga tou pempsantos me heos hemera estin erchetai nux hote oudeis dunatai ergazesthai
It is necessary that we do the work of the one who sent me while it is day. Coming is the night when no one can work.
Later manuscripts use the word eme (me) in place of ἡμᾶς (us), but P66 uses ἡμᾶς, which is “us” or, in this case “we.”
There is a tractate in the Jewish Mishnah called Pirkei Avot or Mishnah Avot (“Sayings of the Fathers”) which contains wisdom sayings of rabbis from around 200 BCE to 200 CE. “Whoever knows Avot,” William Berkson suggests, “knows the heart of Judaism, whether they are Jewish or not.”[1] I have studied the sayings of Mishnah Avot on and off for several years now and compared them with the Apophthegmata Patrum (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers) and the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus sounds most like one of these rabbis from Avot. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5 – 7), Jesus “makes a fence” (Avot 1:1) around the Torah commandments on murder, adultery, oaths, retaliation and love for neighbor (5:21-48). Also, Jesus’s teachings on almsgiving, prayer and fasting in secret appears to be an expansion of a saying of Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, who said, “Know what is above you—an Eye that sees [you give to the poor], an Ear that hears [your prayer], and a Book in which all your deeds are recorded [including your fasts]” (Avot 2:1). By reading Mishnah Avot, which is a short and accessible tractate, one gains a larger understanding and appreciation of the context in which Jesus taught and in which his teachings developed (both by him and his early followers, including the authors of the Gospels).
The Johannine Jesus generally does not remind me of the Matthean Jesus who teaches like a rabbi out of Mishnah Avot. However, in John 9:4, Jesus says something that reminds me of a rabbi from Avot. Jesus says, “It is necessary that we do the work of the one who sent me while it is day. Coming is the night when no one can work.” In Avot 2:20, Rabbi Tarfon says, “The day is short. The task is long. The workers are lazy. The stakes are high. The Master is demanding.”
Rabbi Tarfon is also known for one of the most well known sayings in Avot: “You are not obliged to complete the task, nor are you free to abandon it. If you have studied much Torah you will reap great reward. You can rely on your Employer to pay you your due, but not in the currency of this world, but rather the World to Come” (Avot 2:21). This translation is from Rabbi Rami Shapiro who offers a very accessible edition of Mishnah Avot called Ethics of the Sages: Pirke Avot: Annotated & Explained in the SkyLight Illuminations Series. In this book, Shapiro introduces Rabbi Tarfon as a “leader in the city of Lod (Mishnah Bava Metzia 4:3) [Lod is a city about 10 miles southeast of modern day Tel Aviv) who moved to Yavneh during Rabban Gamliel’s time as Nasi [prince]. Rabbi Tarfon perfected a Socratic teaching style, asking his students questions and inviting discussion. He would often engage his students in dialogue opening with ‘Shall I ask?’ (Tosefta Berachot 4:16).”[2]
Rabbi Tarfon understood and embodied the Jewish spirituality of asking questions. He understood that “a bashful person,” as Rabbi Hillel said, “cannot learn” (Avot 2:6).
Although scholars generally dismiss any historical connection between Rabbi Tarfon and the Jewish character Trypho of Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, Tarfon’s Jewish/Socratic method of teaching and learning reminds me of Justin Martyr’s perceptive and generous interlocutor.
The entire treatise really begins with Trypho’s questions about the importance of questions: “Do not the philosophers turn every discourse on God? And do not questions continually arise to them about His unity and providence? Is not this truly the duty of philosophy, to investigate the Deity?” (Ch 1). After 140 chapters of intense debate, the Dialogue ends with these words:
Then Trypho, after a little delay, said, “You see that it was not intentionally that we came to discuss these points. And I confess that I have been particularly pleased with the conference; and I think that these are of quite the same opinion as myself. For we have found more than we expected, and more than it was possible to have expected. And if we could do this more frequently, we should be much helped in the searching of the Scriptures themselves. But since,” he said, “you are on the eve of departure, and expect daily to set sail, do not hesitate to remember us as friends when you are gone.”
In the end, it appears that Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho can be seen as an example of ancient interfaith learning between Judaism and Christianity, which all begins with Trypho’s question.
The Johannine pericope (Chs 9-10) I am investigating also begins with a question. Although Rabbi Tarfon (and Trypho) were clearly not Christian and likely not readers of the Fourth Gospel, I think they would have appreciated how the pericope begins
The 5th century Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria, on the other hand, seemed to think that the disciples’ question in John 9 was not wholly appropriate since he interprets verse 9:4 in the following way:
Here Jesus is saying, “Why do you ask questions that are better left unsaid? Or why, leaving what suits the time, do you hurry to learn things beyond the capacity of people? It is not a time for such curiosity,” he says, “but for intense work. I think it is more appropriate to pass by such questions and instead zealously execute God’s commands.” (Commentary on the Gospel of John 6.1 [LF 48:16])
Instead of condemning his disciples for asking a question, I suggest that Jesus patiently responded with a multi-layered response and answer that revealed the flawed presuppositions of their questions. The disciples would not have learned all that Jesus taught them in response (and neither would we) had they not asked their question, just like Rabbi Tarfon and Trypho.
Not only did Rabbi Hillel say, “A bashful person cannot learn,” he also said, “an impatient person cannot teach” (2:6). The Johannine Jesus was patient in his response to the bold, brash and non-bashful disciples. Even when Jesus sounds like he is dismissing the disciples’ question as inappropriate (as Cyril of Alexandria suggests), I seem him also affirming the question by referencing a Jewish proverb that has been ascribed to a rabbi who knew the importance of asking questions. In fact, the very “work” to which Rabbi Tarfon refers in his maxim is the “work” of studying Torah, which is best done in the context of asking questions, in community, in chavruta.
We can even see Jesus saying to his disciples, “I’m glad you asked this question. Because I am here for only a short time and there is a lot I want to teach you, we need to make the most of our time together. Soon you will not have me here in the same way.” Although the Paraclete will guide his disciples when Jesus is physically gone (Jn 14:26), they will not be able to interact with him in quite the same way.
But Jesus says “Coming is the night when no one can work.” What does that mean? Even though Jesus might be physically gone after the resurrection, God’s work will still be done on earth through the Paraclete and his disciples; in fact, even greater works than those completed by Jesus (14:12).
So what is this night?
Augustine and Chrysostom see the night of “no work” as the final judgment. Chrysostom sees the ‘work” as faith (“This is the work of God that you believe on him whom he has sent” Jn 6:29). In the end, there will be no faith for those who refused to believe “during the day, but all, whether willingly or unwillingly, will simply submit” (Homilies on the Gospel of John 56:2 [NPNF 1 14:202]). Augustine references the everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels from Matthew 25, saying “Then shall be the night when no one can work but only get back what he has previously done.” (Tractates on the Gospel of John 44.6 [NPNF 1 7:247])
I honestly don’t know what “night” Jesus is referring to here. In some ways, it sounds like he is referring to the sundown that welcomes the Sabbath, in which no one should/is able to work. But that doesn’t quite make sense in light of the following verses about Jesus working (by kneading clay) on the Sabbath.
So I must conclude with an answered question: What or when is this “night in which no one can work”?
Rabbi Tarfon, who encourages the asking of questions, also comforts me as I feel that my work on this enigmatic verse is unfinished and that I have only scratched the surface of its meaning. He reminds me that, although I am not free to avoid doing the work, it is not always necessary that I finish the task…
[1] William Berkson, Pirke Avot: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Life (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2010), 8.
[2] Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Ethics of the Sages: Pirke Avot: Annotated & Explained. SkyLight Illuminations Series (Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2006) xxxvi.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 